Meticulously scruffy smirker Ryan Gosling has announced in an interview that he is taking brief professional hiatus from acting:

"I've been doing it too much. I've lost perspective on what I'm doing. I think it's good for me to take a break and reassess why I'm doing it and how I'm doing it. And I think this is probably a good way to learn about that."

Gosling did not choose to just quietly take a break and then return whenever he had sorted himself out. He made an announcement—look at me, while I unwind and mull over my life! He presented his decision as an artistic choice to "reassess" his craft (he didn't say craft, but you know… it was lurking).

"The more opportunities I'm given, the more I learn about how easy it is to [expletive] it up. You fight for freedom and then you get it, and then you have enough rope to hang yourself. It's like trying to exercise some restraint because I do have so much freedom."

Yes, heaven forbid someone thinks that maybe he's not being offered good parts. Because he definitely is—lots of good parts, he just, you know, he has to play hard to get for a little bit.

"I don't know what I'm doing. I haven't quite figured out what the balance is between being able to be lost in it — or try to, anyway — and then step outside of it...I need a break from myself as much as I imagine the audience does."

Yes, Ryan's fan base, one that made an entire meme about his imagined feminist opinions and another about the actor simply greeting them casually, is crying for a break after the zero movies he starred in during 2012.

Granted, 2012 was most likely a busy year for the baby-duck-named actor, who has been romping about in the entertainment business since he was eight. The cartoonish-noir mush Gangster Squad premiered in January, The Place Beyond the Pines premieres late this month, and his second collaboration with his Drive director Nicolas Winding-Refn, Only God Forgives, should be released in Europe in May. So there will certainly be time to catch a fill of the artfully unkempt charmer's wiles even during his little sojourn.